Audio Science

As of just now, Reason 4 has been announced. That’s right, the eternity of wait is finally over. Today, June 19th, is the day, and now is the time to get the first look at all of the features of the software. If you are a registered Reason owner, you can sign up for beta-testing.

Leading up the pack is Thor, which by all intelligent assumptions should be the soft synth to end all synths. Along with it are, in usual Propellerhead style, less features than the optimistic might expect, but may prove to be some of the most powerful yet. After all, Reason is not about what it is, it’s about what it does.

Next up in the list of the most important sub-features to ever hit the program is the RPG-8, a monophonic arpeggiator (possibly polyphonic in functionality as well). This has been badly needed by some of us, such as myself, and has been requested more consistently than most other features besides audio in and MIDI out.

There have been some major changes and improvements in the sequencer - there is now a separate groove mixer for dialing in different groove feels to tracks, beefing up Reason’s appeal to hip-hop producers and electronic producers. From looking at the pictures, it appears that Reason has jumped up a level in complexity.

Check out the site for more upgrades: propellerheads.se

SSD’s are on the rise, and it’s the best thing to happen to data storage since the hard disk drive. The advantages of SSD’s in all types of computing needs are excellent, and DAW workstations, both mobile and desktop, will benefit immensely. I could fill up a good deal of space naming all the benefits of SSD’s, but here are the key features: With no moving parts, they are far more durable and reliable than hard disk drives, they read and write at more than 5x faster, with 0.11 milliseconds access latency (compared with 17 milliseconds latency with HDDs), and use half the power HDDs do.

I started watching the SSD market closely a couple of months ago, and it has been progressing rapidly. It’s gone from 16 GB being the highest known of, to 64 GB approaching affordability. The best is yet to come, as there are already 512 GB SSD drives coming over the horizon, but only a secret agent budget would afford such, as the high-capacity drives are in the unreachable extremes of expensive.

SanDisk recently announced an increase in their 2.5″ and 1.8″ SSD drives from 32 GB to 64 GB. The 32 GB versions will be priced upwards of $300, but there’s no word on what the 64 GB version will cost. They’ll be offering engineering samples in Q3, but as production is scheduled for the end of this year, we probably won’t see these truly on the market until the beginning of 2008.

It is possible to get your hands on a 32 GB SSD right now for about $300-400, as Matt Mullenberg, Wordpress founder has done. I personally can’t wait to get one in my laptop, as I need the speed, but I’m going to have to wait until they’re easier to get ahold of.

(Via Engadget)

The Monome 40h has been a tremendous success, and the 400 units they produced have completely sold out. Monome is now looking ahead to not only continuing production of the 40h in one way or another, but they will be producing two new sizes: a 128-button version (16×8) and a 256-button version (16×16).

From monome’s news section:
“all will feature wood enclosures with recessed aluminum top plates. all monome hardware will be inter-compatible with monome software. we haven’t set firm release dates for the two new projects, though they’re modularly based on the 256 (previously the 100h), so the development time should be very short.”

As always, you can look to the monome user forum if you are looking for a used 40h, but if you’re expensive enough willing to spend a few hundred more, they are producing a 12-unit special edition run with some special features for $800 apiece.